VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 2, let me tell you a story about THE TICKET: Today, thousands of tickets for movies, concerts, & museums reside on cell phones with a QR code waiting to be used like those for admittance for tonight’s college football championship game between Michigan & Washington. There was a day however, when tickets were tangible, some printed, some handwritten in triplicate. Tomorrow, 50 years ago, January 9, 1974, when the Russian & US governments held the world hostage in a crisis called The Cold War, was such a day for one of the handwritten varieties. That morning, a father woke his 11 year old, sports crazed son about 4:30 & offered him a ticket. A ticket to inform that son, your writer, that he would be absent from Mrs. Farrow’s sixth grade classroom. My dad would be invoking the fly anywhere in the Continental U.S. for $5 perk of being an airline employee & we would be taking a DC-3 from Lovell Field to Canton, Ohio to visit The Pro Football Hall of Fame. A day canonized, not to the level of Bishop Cyril & the books of the Bible, but still up there, in my book of memory. My first airline flight, the artifacts & history, the bronze busts of the men whose feats, whose grit & faith built the status of professional football from Sunday afternoon distraction to spectacle, & a meal before flying home at York Steakhouse. I recall those things but not as much as a walk is recalled, a detour my dad & I took before that steak dinner. We headed over to the now renovated, renamed, & pictured looking more like it did that winter day, Fawcett Stadium, the place we saw on TV each July as some NFL veterans & some pro wannabes kicked off the preseason with the Hall of Fame game. We walked with snow making its crunchy staccato under our feet, stopping under the scoreboard deep in the photo. There, he encouraged me that if I wanted to be on that field, in that hall, I could be with work & the same belief in myself that he had in me, the belief I’d be great. Funny, it was the same talk he gave as a baseball season ended in failure, but it led to the next season ending with an All City honor. The same words when I faced a rehab for a left leg that exploded from knee to ankle while chasing the football dream. The same talk when rehab didn’t work out & he told me there was more than being a ballplayer ahead, like being a good friend, husband, & father. He found the time before my wedding & his grandson’s delivery days to remind me I’d do great in those roles. And those times when life or self inflicted life decisions blurred the line between victim & perpetrator, between speculation & fact, same words. When the bleachers were standing room only with doubters & critics, he was at the ticket window, purchasing a front row box seat on the believers side. The same talk I hear as this writing adventure weighs anchor as ships were meant to sail, not be tied to a pier. The same talk I hear & repeat to myself every day as my mom & our family joust with the Purple Knight of Alzheimer’s, because while some days are easier, none of ‘em are easy & the eyes in the mirror don’t grade on a curve. My dad was the founding & sometimes only member of my fan club ’cause sometimes, boys let their mommas down. In the last five years alone, I’ve been privileged to be a father of a college grad, soon to be a father-in-law a second time, & called Papa by two beautiful little girls. I wish my dad was here to meet them, to give them or my boys or me a talk, to tell us we’ll be great. He’s not, but if he was, I know which ticket he’d be offering …